"these prices are not because of anything shady there from an insanely advanced transportation and supply chain, low employee overhead, and high volume of traffic to Wal Mart. "not necessarily. the low prices exist because walmart says they exist. companies have to bid to get on the shelves at walmart. if their prices are not what walmart wants and they're unable to change them, the company's product doesn't get on walmart's shelves. i think it was the brand rubber maid that practically went out of business a few years back because they thought they were big enough that they didn't have to acquiesce to walmart's pricing demands. walmart then went with someone who would agree to their price and rubber maid tanked. this forced rubber maid, and other companies that want to get onto walmart's shelves, to reduce the quality of their product to allow manufacturing to be below a certain cost.there's a reason why "mom and pop stores" went out of business in droves when walmart started to get big. it's because of their strong hand tactics at keeping prices low. at a certain point, they became big enough that they no longer followed the market prices for a large number of items, they set the market prices, and many companies that produced goods failed because of walmart's hand in the system. the rather odd example of this is that walmart would set prices low. this, in turn, increases traffic volume and cements their position for keeping their business up. it is their strong arm tactics for keeping prices low that bring in the high volume of traffic, not a high volume of traffic that keeps volume low.the whole notion that the "free market" is completely self regulatory is a naive myth. it's the reason that there are, at least, antitrust laws. these are regulations to keepe the market "free," but then it's not really a free market if it's regulated, is it? the reason there needs to be antitrust laws, is because the true nature of a free market always tends towards a group of monopolies. it's the natural inclination of markets. the market cannot regulate itself because certain practices disallow competition. a company like walmart has taken, to the greatest extent that it can, manipulation of the markets so that it remains the dominant company. don't get me wrong, some of the positives about walmart that you state do exist, but to think that there aren't severe ethical negatives associated with the company is blatantly wrong. walmart is the reason we're so dependent on china for manufacturing of goods. it's a given that if it were not walmart, some other company would have eventually lead the way, but as it stands, it wasn't some other company, it was and is walmart.